Prehistoric Park: Carnotaurus
by bhut
Summary: Nigel is beginning to explore the sauropods of the late Cretaceous South America and beyond, but something might be wrong with the park's T-Rexes.
1. Chapter 1

**Prehistoric Park: Carnotaurus**

_Disclaimer: none of the characters here are mine, all of them belong to Impossible Pictures™ and co._

_Note: this is a sequel to my earlier story, Prehistoric Park: Dino-Babies._

The day dawned brightly sunny and unexpectedly warm for an early autumn day. Nigel Marven woke up equally brightly and cheery and said to no one in particular:

"I think that I know as to what time period we shall go forth today!"

"And where is that?" asked Bob the caretaker of the park, seeing how Nigel has made this declaration at a breakfast time. "To a Miocene Africa?"

"That's a very interesting, though an oddly specific suggestion," Nigel ignored the odd specifications. "No, I shall go to the late Cretaceous South America instead!"

"And what is there?" Suzanne the vet said grudgingly. "Dinosaurs?"

"Yes!"

"More T-Rexes?"

"Oh no," Nigel replied, sounding fully serious. "You got your late Cretaceous continents confused; T-Rexes have lived only in the North America at that time, though their cousins lived in Asia instead. They never lived in South America at all; instead, other carnivorous dinosaurs ruled the roost there – but I'm going there for a different reason entirely, I'm going there for the sauropods!"

"We have some sauropods here already."

"Yes, and they seem to have reproduced, and I want to go to South America to compare and see how it worked out," Nigel replied in all seriousness. "South America and Africa were the last strongholds of those long-necked dinosaurs by the end of the Mesozoic, elsewhere, they've disappeared entirely from the face of the planet, but in South America and Africa they managed to hold on – and so to there I go to study them and to see as to what makes them tick!" And he was off.

"Now what?" Bob asked Suzanne.

"I've no idea," the latter admitted. "I need to give my regular check-up to Martha the mammoth, though-"

Bob nodded and left.

/ / /

The land on the other side of the portable time portal was rather different from the weather in the present: rather than cool and dry, it was hot and dry; there was nary a cloud in the sky, and the vegetation on the ground while still green was showing signs of wilting as well.

"Looks as if it is the beginning of the dry period here," Nigel thoughtfully told his team. "The plants are still green, so the weather is still wet, but clearly the rains have moved on, or are moving on by now. The soil, and the plants, are beginning to dry out. Interesting." He looked down and around some more. "You notice that there isn't really any grasses around? That is because they have not yet evolved; the flowering plants – angiosperms – _are_ here already, but the grasses that we are used to in the modern time will appear later, in the Cenozoic-"

"Nigel!" one of his crew called out, as the aforementioned dry (and dusty) ground suddenly interrupted, revealing several large shapes, clearly bipedal – dinosaur carnivores…

/ / /

As Suzanne began to check up on Martha the mammoth's health, and also give her a shave, her spirits lifted up almost despite herself: she always felt good when dealing with this Ice Age relative of the modern elephants. Unlike many some other inhabitants of the Park, Martha was normally mild-mannered and friendly; she was not even bothered by the presence of the two younger Smilodon, now longer really cubs, but juveniles… though this did not stop the two Ice Age cats from playing with clumps of mammoth fur, not unlike how house cats played with balls of thread, for example.

Suzanne frowned. In the past, in the wild, those two Smilodon would be probably learning as to how to hunt their natural prey and to live on their own in the wild, but here, in the Prehistoric Park, clearly something different was in order, but what-?

Suzanne did not have time to figure out, as she noticed that they had company – the marsupials. The Thylacosmilus pointedly ignored its' placental counterparts, it approached one of the bigger piles of the shaved mammoth fur and plopped down in it, sideways. Immediately, a much smaller and saberless version of it climbed out of its' pouch and began to prance on it.

Both Smilodon immediately switched their attention to the marsupials and began to move towards them. Sadly, they forgot about the Thylacoleo, which promptly positioned itself between them and the marsupial sabretooth and began to look at them rather meanly. The Smilodon faltered, stopped, but did not back down either, but just sat down and began to stare back.

"Uh," Suzanne muttered, realizing that there was a potentially explosive situation on her hands and she should call for back up, when even more new faces arrived; well, the old-new faces, if you wanted to get technical: the Troodon and the terror bird. Ignoring the mammals, they began to trot through the shearing site, looking for something smaller for them to eat… and also to play with the fur, not unlike how some other animals played with such items as sticks and feathers for fun…

As Suzanne's thoughts grew even more tangled and confusing, a new sound caught her ear again – it was the Elasmotherium. The prehistoric rhinoceros was not as friendly or social as Martha was, but when it came to having its' own fur cut, it was sufficiently well behaved, so there was not any problems with it either, and Suzanne did not want to have it wait.

Martha gently reached-out with her trunk and patted Suzanne on the shoulder in order to bring the human's attention back to her. "Right," Suzanne muttered crossly. "I need to finish shaving you too. Maybe things will work out in the long run-?"

And actually, they did.

/ / /

"This is just whoa," Nigel muttered, as he and his people found themselves flanked by five or six Carnotaurus dinosaurs. Noticeably smaller than the Park's tyrannosaurs, these dinosaurs were built similarly to the bigger carnivores, except for two notable features: their forelimbs were even smaller, proportionally, than those of tyrannosaurs, and their heads were blunter and had a pair of trademark horns of these carnivorous reptiles.

…Nigel's own cool-under-pressure attitude was explained simply: the theropods were ignoring the humans, period. Having finished their dust baths, the abelisaurs' were grooming themselves, scratching each other with their broad and powerful hindlimbs as well as with their horns in those hard to reach places, and clearly enjoying themselves.

"I don't remember our dinosaurs doing this," one of Nigel's crew muttered.

"Yes, unlike birds, it seems that the dinosaurs aren't big on dirt baths," Nigel admitted, "but apparently those ones are. See how they are covered with a healthy covering of dust and dirt and soil, giving them this yellowish tint to their scales? It may be additional camouflage, but judging by their current behavior, they are bathing and rolling in it for health-related reasons instead – and they appear to be enjoying themselves too. I actually don't remember any of our park's theropod dinosaurs doing this-"

Nigel trailed away, as the abelisaurs stopped with their warm-up, fun and games, and instead grew business-like. Their blunt but wide muzzles sniffed their air, their posture notably stiffened, and as a single unit, the entire family went off towards a riverine copse, splitting into two groups and forming something of a pincer.

"While smaller than their carnosaur neighbours, abelisaurs still hunted sauropods and very successfully. Let's follow them and see what we'll come up with!" Nigel told his team brightly, and off they went.

/ / /

…Contrary to Suzanne's concern, everything was actually going down smoothly at the shearing site: she has finished giving Martha her haircut, and has now moved onto the Elasmotherium. The big, if not outright giant, prehistoric rhinoceros normally was nowhere as even-tempered and social as Martha was, but right now it was just as cooperative as Martha had been, standing still as Suzanne removed heavy clumps of its' own fur.

Suzanne's impromptu, (and unrequited) entourage were just as happy, for while on her own Martha had produced a lot of fur, with the shearing of the Elasmotherium, the amount of fur has doubled, as had the animals' fun. For once all of them were enjoying themselves and were actually making a successful effort to get along, as Bob pointed out to Suzanne, as the latter was finishing shearing the Elasmotherium and was about to take a break.

"Yes, I've noticed," Suzanne said a bit crossly – sometimes Bob could be something of a captain Obvious, which was not always pleasant. "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be keeping an eye out on the T-Rexes, seeing how Matilda at least broke-out from their enclosure in the past?"

"Actually they are a part of the reason as to why I'm over here," the groundskeeper admitted. "They appear to be under the weather lately, so maybe you could come over and look at them later?"

"Maybe," Suzanne admitted. She was never too comfortable around the tyrannosaurs even when they were younger, but now they were grown-up, and there were three of them rather than two, which was another can of problems entirely, one that Suzanne did not want to tackle right now. "Can you be more specific?"

"No," Bob admitted. "They do appear to be losing weight, however, you know?"

"Very well, I will come over to them and see what is going on," Suzanne grumpily admitted. "Lead on, McDuff!"

Bob, who was Scottish enough to recognize the line from Shakespeare, just rolled his eyes.

/ / /

Back in the late Cretaceous South America Nigel and his team were surprised, when by following the local carnivores they'd arrived at a sauropod nesting ground… but they were at a wrong time, it seemed. The eggs have all hatched, the baby sauropodlets were all gone, and the ground was full of tracks that would eventually fossilize – both of the three-toed theropod variety and of the round sauropod one.

"Darn it," Nigel muttered. "We're too late. The sauropod eggs have hatched, the youngsters have left for different pastures, the herd has moved on… so why the carnivores are still here?"

"Nigel!" came the cry of one of his people, as they indicated the riverside copse – one of several – that were located between the river and the currently abandoned nesting grounds. The carnivores in question were very interested in it, as three of them moved into it – slowly, cautiously.

"Hm," Nigel grew even more thoughtful. "Carnotaurus was smaller than the T-Rex, but it was built similarly to the bigger carnivore; it was a creature of the open plains, so why are those dinosaurs going in there?"

…Actually, two of the Carnotaurus were not going into the copse, but rather were strutting down the river bank in open sight of both Nigel and his team – and a juvenile sauropod, one that was much bigger than a hatchling, but also much smaller than an adult dinosaur of its species.

"This must be a juvenile Saltasaurus," Nigel whispered in excitement, "it was actually one of the smaller species of sauropods that lived in South America during the Cretaceous, but it can still be a tough customer for the abelisaurs. Wonder if they are going to attack it together, like modern crocodiles and alligators do…"

However, it seemed that at least two of the abelisaurs had different ideas as they pranced on the river shore, eventually emitting a series of cries – and they were answered by a much deeper bellow, as the waters foamed and a monstrous reptile burst onto the shore. Surprisingly, it was not another dinosaur, but a member of a different branch of the archosaur family – a giant cousin of the modern crocodiles, Sarcosuchus. Snapping its' long jaws, flailing its long tail, it was a genuinely horrible sight – or at least that is what the juvenile Saltasaurus thought, as it whirled around and fled (by sauropod standards) into the trees – and into the jaws of the other abelisaurs.

The head and jaws of the Carnotaurus is wide and blunt, built almost like a vise, and its teeth too were very different from those of the carnosaurs – relatively short and thick, they were built for crushing rather than tearing flesh, and this was what those carnivores did: they bit down onto and into the sauropod and they pulled it downwards. The remainder of the pack join in, biting down onto the sauropod's hindquarters, just as the other members bit down on its neck and shoulders – and the juvenile sauropod fell. Only its' tail remained twitching.

This was when the Sarcosuchus came ashore. Though slower than the Carnotaurus pack was, this lumbering giant approached the dying sauropod quickly enough, and its powerful jaws snapped, shearing away the herbivore's tail, before the prehistoric crocodile cousin swallowed it whole. Feeling sated and satisfied, it turned and left back for the river, leaving the abelisaurs fighting over the remaining corpse.

"I think that we've seen enough for now," Nigel said thoughtfully, "let's go home to the Prehistoric Park for now.

And so they did.

/ / /

"Nigel," Suzanne exclaimed, trying to sound more surprised than relieved, (and succeeding in doing so). "No dinosaurs or other prehistoric animals this time?"

"No, not this time," Nigel replied thoughtfully. "Is anything wrong?"

"Maybe the T-Rexes," Suzanne admitted. "Why don't you take a look?"

They did. The T-Rex trio were lying around, or rather – rolling around, looking rather despondent, almost underweight and certainly under the weather. They were also scratching each other with their claws and biting each other – relatively gently – with their powerful jaws and teeth.

"Oh dear," Nigel muttered, who was clearly remembering the initial interaction of the Carnotaurus pack between each other, and was seeing a certain reflection of this behavior here. "Suzanne, I think that I have a generic idea of what is wrong here. Still, maybe a medical check-up of them might be in order?"

Suzanne just groaned and complied.

_TBC_


	2. Chapter 2

**Prehistoric Park: Tyrannosaurs**

_Disclaimer: all characters belong to Impossible Pictures™, again._

…When Nigel, Suzanne, Bob, and the rest of their posse arrived at the T-Rex enclosure, they had to admit that Bob, in particular, had been correct – the tyrant lizard kings appeared to be rather under the weather, listless even.

"You know, they _haven't_ been escaping from their enclosure lately, or harassing the park's other occupants, not even the sauropods," Suzanne thoughtfully told Nigel and the others. She did not like those dinosaurs as much as most of the other residents of their Park, but she had to admit that what she was currently looking at, it was not really an improvement: the big dinosaurs were grouchy and hostile at each other, just… in an inert kind of way.

"They look almost malnourished," she told thoughtfully the others, "but this isn't the case – I've been checking over their diets since, well, ever, and I know that we got it hammered out-"

"I know," Nigel agreed, surprising her. "In a twist of dramatic irony we have seen something similar in a pack of Carnotauruses in the late Cretaceous South America. Apparently, some theropod dinosaurs took dust baths, not unlike how their cousins the modern birds do."

"Maybe, but what prevents them from doing it here?" Suzanne did not sound truly convinced.

"Good point," Nigel grew thoughtful himself, as he remembered his encounter with the abelisaurs back in the past. "The other carnivores just bathed around in the dusty soil of the prehistoric South American prairies. We got the tyrannosaurs from the late Cretaceous North America, from a fairly different environment. I think that we got to check on the soil down there now, instead. Suzanne, get some medical stats from Matilda and the other two just in case. It can be useful." And he left.

"This is actually a coherent plant, especially by his standards," Bob told their shocked friend. "Maybe the day won't be doomed."

Suzanne just gave Bob the stink-eye.

/ / /

When Nigel and his field crew returned to the T-Rexes' corner of the late Cretaceous North America, what hit them this time first was the smell, metaphorically speaking. "It smells of smoke, very strong, actually," Nigel said thoughtfully, "yet we've arrived this time several years before the meteorite arrived and slammed into Earth, meaning that it is still the Mesozoic, the dinosaurs still aren't extinct, and the smell isn't because of the K/T Extinction, not yet."

"Nigel!" one of his people called out, pointing at something in the distance. That 'something' was actually a volcano with a smoking crater, though fortunately, it was not fully erupting yet. Regardless, there was some sort of blurry activity on one of its slopes.

"Let's see closer," Nigel muttered excitedly, as he raised his binoculars and looked at the spot. What he – and the others – saw there was a mostly dismembered and eaten Triceratops. Several tyrannosaurs were lounging around in the area, rolling around on the warm volcanic slope, rubbing their flanks, back, belly and etc. on the ashy and tarry soil of the volcano, looking clearly happy with themselves. The dinosaurs were different, the landscape was different, even the continent was different from Nigel's previous trip, but the situation was actually similar, if not identical.

"Ah, that's what I thought," Nigel told his people. "The modern birds do this sort of thing for health-related reasons, to get rid of external parasites and the like. Looks like some dinosaurs, such as the T-Rex and the Carnotaurus have also done that, probably for the same reasons, plus…" he touched the volcanic soil and grew even more thoughtful. "Plus maybe the extra warmth from the volcano didn't hurt either. There may be a reason as to why this particular pack of tyrannosaurs, as well as the other dinosaurs, like the Triceratops, were living here, even though volcanoes do erupt from occasion. Ah well, let's pack several sacks of the local soil and go back to the Park to analyze and hopefully to replicate it as well."

As Nigel and his team got to work, a couple of reptilian heads with big eyes watched them dig around.

/ / /

As Suzanne entered the tyrannosaurs' enclosure, she could not help herself, but to grow nervous: the giant carnivores were not up to their regular selves, but they were still capable enough to swallow her whole with one snap of those jaws.

"Right," she looked around. "Let's see if you've been shedding lately-"

They did. Unlike snakes, who shed their skin in one solid piece, rather like a sock, tyrannosaurs shed it more as how lizards did it, in bits and pieces. Right now, pieces of shed skin were lying all over the enclosure, and-

"Hm," Suzanne blinked, as she collected several of shed skin samples. "I don't remember them doing this before, it might not be normal-"

One of the tyrannosaurs – Terrence – suddenly rumbled in obvious irritation and began to get back onto its feet. If it _was not_ in a peak physical condition, it certainly did not show that as it stood up quickly enough and the look that it shot Suzanne was not particularly friendly or distressed. Realizing that she was outstaying her welcome, Suzanne quickly grabbed the samples that she had already collected from the tyrannosaurs' enclosure and withdrew.

Terrence, sadly, did not appear to be finished with her as he began to move forwards. In fact, for a supposedly unwell dinosaur, he was beginning to pick up steam; upon seeing this, the other two T-Rexes, Matilda and No. 3 also began to get up. "Oh dear," muttered Suzanne, as she got outside, out of the enclosure. "Looks like we got worried too early-"

Terrence charged, Usually he and No. 3 let Matilda take the lead, but this time it appeared that he was irritated enough to lead. He was also strong enough to make the enclosure wall shake; it held, but there were cracks and splinters in it, and seeing how the other two tyrannosaurs were about to join in, it would not last for too long.

And then the sauropods arrived. The giant long-necked herbivores lumbered past the tyrannosaurs' enclosure ignoring everything and everyone; Suzanne, for example, had to scurry as not to be trampled by the behemoths.

Oddly, the tyrannosaurs did not particularly like the sauropods' arrival either, as they stopped charging at the fence and emitted a series of hoarse roaring challenges.

The sauropods did not visibly acknowledge the carnivores, but they did pick up the pace by their standards and vanished from the scene in record time. So did Suzanne, in a manner of speaking.

"Didn't their conflict with the tyrannosaurs play out very differently the last time they tangled, when No. 3 arrived and all?" Bob muttered, as he and the aforementioned vet watched the sauropods depart from a safe distance.

"Yes it had," Suzanne said, sounding even more miserable than when she was off to collect the skin samples. "Bob, I'm afraid that I need to collect the stool samples as well."

Bob blanched. "Don't we have some freely available, in the waste disposal bin?"

"Let's check it out first," Suzanne agreed.

/ / /

Back in the Cretaceous, Nigel and his people were about done with collecting the soil samples as well. The tyrannosaurs were still active in the distance, but they were too far away to notice humans by sight or smell, or maybe they were too busy with their own affairs instead. This was good, because even Nigel had to admit that three tyrannosaurs for their park were probably just about enough, and more would be too much.

That said, he and the others were aware that they were being watched, but whoever the watchers were, they weren't about to conflict with humans, which was good, because otherwise Nigel would've probably caught them and took them back to the Park…

Or maybe not, for as he and his team began to go back through the time portal, the dinosaurs emerged from their points of observation, and judging by the killing claws on their feet, they were not tyrannosaurs at all…

"Raptors!" Nigel said delightfully. "At this moment in time they're called Dakotaraptors, and alongside the better known Deinonychus and Utahraptor they're the biggest of the raptors! Technically speaking, they are the real life Jurassic Park raptors, if you are to go by their size alone-"

The raptors stomped on the ground and hissed, revealing their teeth.

"However," Nigel admitted reluctantly, "we need to get back to our time first and check on the tyrannosaurs. We will have to catch the raptors later-"

The raptors charged. Nigel and the others just managed to make it through the time portal as the theropods leapt and landed in front of them, in the Prehistoric Park proper!

…Fortunately Bob and several other park workers were present on the site to tranquilize the new arrivals upon their, well, arrival. "How's Suzanne?" Nigel asked his friend as the greetings were made and the raptors were taken into a holding pen for the immediate future.

"Doing some medical examinations," Bob said vaguely. "What does your plan feature now?"

"We need to deep a fairly wide and deep pit, and fill it with this volcanic soil," Nigel replied. "Let's start digging!"

And so they did.

/ / /

Digging a pit is not exhausting work, but it is hard and rather boring. Bob did not mind, he liked boring, though the various dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals who came over to check up on them did liven things up.

"Did you know that the Thylacosmilus has a cub?" Nigel conversationally asked the other man as the pit was finished, filled with the volcanic soil and now they had to release the tyrannosaurs into its' vicinity.

"Yeah, saw it only recently. A well-formed one, it is," Bob did not bat an eye. "Suzanne claims that the marsupial wasn't pregnant when you brought it from the past, so it must've been already in the pouch?"

"Probably so, right," Nigel grew thoughtful. "Marsupials develop differently from ordinary mammals, when they first emerge they are those tiny pink bean like creatures that are completely helpless and need to stay in their mother's pouch to grow up. But then they begin to grow up faster than the other mammals do, physically at least. We will need to check on their health and see how they are, both mother and child."

"Good luck with that," Bob pointed at the marsupial lion. "The big guy and the marsupial sabretooths are getting along quite well, it just might decide to interfere-"

"We'll worry about this problem when we'll have to," Nigel replied placidly, "now let's first finish with the tyrannosaurs. Release the Rexes!" He paused and added to Bob, brightly: "always wanted to say that!"

And the tyrannosaurs were released. And they entered into the new enclosure, adjacent to their main one… cautiously. And they smelled it – they might have been distantly related to the birds, but their sense of smell was very keen – and they smelled the soil. Slowly, they moved over to it, smelled it some more, and… took several big gulps of it, (even though their teeth and jaws were not really designed for this sort of thing). They swallowed it with some reluctance… and then they defecated, rather explosively. Rather disgustingly too, if truth be told.

Nigel, however, did not mind. "I don't remember the Carnotaurus pack from the late Cretaceous South America doing any of this _at all_. Ah well, different strokes for different folks – or dinosaurs, I suppose," he told Bob, who definitely did mind.

"Ah! I see that you're solving the situation already," Suzanne spoke-up, startling the latter, before he could say something _sharp_. "Glad to see this. Nigel, at least a part of the tyrannosaurs' problem was that their diet gotten unbalanced and they needed some medication, natural or otherwise, fast. I see that you did get it, too," she looked at the soil-filled pit. "We'll need to study this too."

"Glad to hear this," Bob said sourly. "Did you know that the marsupial sabretooth has a cub? And Nigel wants you to give both it and the mother a check-up?"

"Hm," Suzanne nodded simply. "This is going to be tricky; they don't like me because of my Smilodon entourage. Nigel, you have any ideas?"

"I'll need to think about this," Nigel said simply. "For now, though, I'll need to return to the late Cretaceous South America in regards to our earlier problem with the sauropods, remember?"

"Sure do, good luck," Suzanne said graciously, and Nigel left to recharge himself, (metaphorically speaking).

"Now what?" Bob asked, still cranky.

"Now we recover and figure out what we shall do with the marsupials," Suzanne replied.

_TBC_


	3. Chapter 3

**Prehistoric Park: Giganotosaurus**

_Disclaimer: all characters belong to Impossible Pictures™._

…With the latest T-Rex crisis resolved, Nigel Marvin and his team could return once more to the other immediate dinosaur problem – that of the sauropods. "I'm thinking that we need to get back to the late Cretaceous South America," Nigel admitted to Bob, Suzanne and the rest of his people. "Last time we didn't get enough information, or really seen any sauropods – Sarcosuchus and the abelisaurs have stolen the show."

"Well, if you say so," Suzanne the vet replied faux-brightly, seeing how she, (possibly with Bob's help) was to give a check-up to a protective mother Thylacosmilus and her baby. "Good luck and good speed ahead!"

"Thank you!" Nigel replied in his trademark way and off he went, (alongside his field team).

Suzanne looked around. "Now how to deal with the marsupials?" she muttered to no one in particular. "Does anyone have any ideas?"

Sadly, none were forthcoming, so Suzanne left as well, to locate the mammals in question first, and then she would see what would happen.

/ / /

On the other side of the time portal, as Nigel and the others arrived in the late Cretaceous South America, they were greeted by a rather different landscape than they had previously: it was quite a bit colder, for one thing, and there was even a healthy layer of snow on the ground.

"Uh oh," Nigel said to no one in particular as they looked around for either the local sauropods or the Carnotaurus packs that preyed on them. "This isn't good. The middle late Cretaceous was marked by a drop in temperature. The dinosaurs in North America managed to live in that time period just fine, as we have seen on one of our previous trips, but this is South America, where the animals were very different from the northern ones. It will be interesting to see as to how they managed to deal with the cold… if they did at all."

Upon saying this, he and the others went slowly towards the copse where they had seen the abelisaurs hunt down a juvenile sauropod previously, and where a river flowed, where a Sarcosuchus lived.

Now the trees' foliage and needles looked rather frostbitten itself, and the river looked to be much shallower and smaller than it was before. There was no signs of any animal life anymore, big or small, and so the party of humans made through it and emerged on the other side.

There lay a deep valley, or even a flood plain, with rather steep sides. Not so long ago, it was clearly full of life, as its muddy soil was dotted with plenty of tracks – both bird-like of theropods and more elephantine of sauropods. There were plenty of nest sites too – fairly wide and deep holes in the soil, once full of eggs, but not just full of eggshells, empty and done. The sauropods themselves – hatchlings, juveniles, even adults – were gone too, though their bones, big, small, and giant still dotted here, there, and everywhere, both separate bones and skeletons in various stages of completion.

Some skeletons did not look like sauropods'; rather, they seemed to belong to theropods, (though none appeared to feature the Carnotaurus' signature horns), or even to pterosaurs, the flying reptiles of the Mesozoic that _were not_ dinosaurs, (only their cousins).

"Oh dear," Nigel sighed sadly. "Most people believe that the existence of dinosaurs was just one smooth uninterrupted process from when they appeared on the face of the planet in the Triassic until the end of the Cretaceous, when the asteroid arrived from space and ended all of them immediately, at once. In reality, both their evolution and extinction was a continuous process, and at the end of the Cretaceous the extinction had been going on for a while, where once dozens of dinosaur species roamed, at the end only a few survived – and that is in North America. Here, in the South, the extinction might have culminated even before the official K/T Event, namely now, and not from extra-terrestrial fire, but from cold and ice-!"

Nigel did not finish, as a sauropod skeleton shook, shuddered, and fell to pieces, and a pair of dinosaurs emerged from the bone pile. Neither looked like abelisaurs, more like tyrannosaurs, but they were actually tall and long, with longer, thinner snouts, delicate blade-like ridges on muzzles and heads, and with much more well-developed forelimbs than those of a T-Rex.

"Those aren't any abelisaurs, Carnotaurus or otherwise," Nigel said sagely. "Rather, they look like late Cretaceous carnosaurs of some sort – giganotosaurus, or mapusaurus, or so on…"

Nigel trailed away as the dinosaurs stared at him and his party and sniffed the air, their breath forming trails of vapor in the chilly air. "Right," Nigel muttered in a much less philosophical manner. "Carnosaurs didn't have as developed binocular vision as the tyrannosaurs did, but their sense of smell was still good enough. We should retreat – normally we would be too small for those giants, but those two look starving and rather frost-bitten, so we would withdraw."

…Sadly, as they began to do exactly that, the carnosaurs began to move forwards as well.

/ / /

Things were not going according to plan, Suzanne mused, as the marsupial sabretooth refused to cooperate. It was smaller and slimmer than the Smilodon were, looking almost like a leopard or a puma instead, but the muzzle was certainly unique, what with its long sabre-teeth and the sheath-like indentations on the lower jaw. Right now, though, the sabre-tooth were certainly unsheathed, as the Thylacosmilus mother took one look at the approaching vet and opened her gape really wide, with her sabre-like teeth almost parallel to the ground.

Something landed with a soft sound off to Suzanne's side. She looked there, and sure enough, there was the marsupial lion, standing on its' hind legs, looking like some sort of an unholy cross between a human and a giant koala bear, just with differently-shaped ears. The gaze it gave to Suzanne was not very friendly either.

"You know," Suzanne said gamely, hoping despite herself that the marsupials would understand her, "I'm not really all that scary at all!"

The prehistoric marsupials were not convinced and would rather her be elsewhere.

"Right, let's try plan B," Suzanne muttered, as she reached for her assistant and produced the aforementioned plan – a teddy bear that was almost human-sized on one hand, and dosed with several smells – i.e. catnip, vanilla and banana – on the other. "How's that for a distraction?"

With a surprisingly human-like gesture, the Thylacoleo snatched the plush toy out of Suzanne's grip and began to sniff it. The Thylacosmilus mother and cub also stopped being openly hostile, and instead trotted over before joining in on the smell.

"Right," Suzanne told her own assistants. "Prepare the field lab. We don't know how long Bob will keep the Smilodon at bay and we so don't need them appearing here right now!"

/ / /

_Meanwhile…_

"…I did not expect this," Bob confessed to no one in particular. Having been tasked in keeping the young Smilodon away from the marsupials – the two groups of prehistoric mammals didn't like or trust each other very much – he'd been at a loss of what to do, until he tried to play fetch with them. This actually was not going too well… until Martha the mammoth came over from the pasture that she was sharing with the African bush elephant herd and took over at the action in question with far greater enthusiasm (and success) than Bob did.

The matriarch of the elephant herd in question – she and Martha had a complex relationship of their own – came over, followed by the rest of the herd, because elephants are intelligent animals, (just as their woolly mammoth cousins were, apparently), and are curious to see if something interesting and not dangerous is going on in the neighbourhood. Apparently, Martha's interaction with the juvenile Smilodon ticked off all the right boxes, as first the herd's matriarch took over the game, (without too much reluctance from Martha), and then the herd's current calf joined in, deciding that it was better to participate than to just observe, (it was at that age, you know?), so now it was fetching the stick alongside the Smilodon. That was risky, as even modern African lions, which are not as physically powerful as the Smilodon, even juveniles, were known to bring down elephant calves, but these Smilodon would rather play with the elephants than hunt them. Good news for everyone around, then.

"I'll think I'll record it and show to Nigel," Bob muttered to no one in particular. "This is just not normal."

It was then that he received a signal – Nigel and his field team has returned, and they brought company with them.

/ / /

"So Nigel, what did you bring back this time," Bob muttered, as he surveyed the hole in the walls surrounding the Park's time portals. "The sauropods that you've been talking about lately?"

"No, I'm afraid," Nigel admitted rather ruefully. "Rather, a couple of carnosaur theropods, probably Giganotosaurus or Mapusaurus that hunt them."

"Don't we have a herd of sauropods of our own?" Bob could not help but to ask.

"Yes, and we'll need to figure out how to separate the two species ASAP," Nigel admitted sadly. "Both the carnosaurs and the various abelisaurs that lived in the late Cretaceous South America hunted the local sauropods, but the smaller abelisaurs probably went more after the juveniles, while the bigger carnosaurs attacked even the adult herbivores-"

"Nigel, you got to see this!" one of the park's staff called out, and so Nigel went, (and so did Bob), to see what was the excitement.

It was the carnosaurs, but no, they were not attacking the sauropods, which still gave them a wide berth. Having been brought to the Park by Nigel from early Cretaceous China, they were used to smaller species of this family, such as the Sinraptor, and so they instinctively knew exactly that the new arrivals were dangerous, even more so than the tyrannosaurs. Yet the carnosaurs ignored them, instead preferring to roll around the grass around the sauropods' usual drinking spot, tear it out with their powerful forelimbs and feet…and just generally enjoy themselves. On occasion, one or both of them would get onto their feet, drink some water and make gurgling sounds to the other reptile, which would reply. Some distinctly non-hostile snapping of jaws was also involved.

"They look like some crazy giant-sized mix of secretary birds and alligators," Bob muttered, "and while they aren't as bulky as the tyrannosaurs are, they are longer than they are. We'll clearly have a hard time figuring where to host them."

…Even as he spoke, the theropods began to add new activity to their mix: they began to dig a big pit, not unlike that of a sauropod nest, (the South American, not the Chinese variety), lining it with great clumps of grass that they tore out with their long, almost scissor-like jaws.

"Or maybe they'll do the choice for us," Bob continued without missing a beat as several Microraptors, which usually followed the sauropods around the Park, half-fluttered and half-glided over to see what the new arrivals were up to.

The Giganotosaurs paused in their current undertaking, eyed the new arrivals, sniffed the air and snorted, and then continued with what they were doing, deciding that the new arrivals weren't dangerous at all.

"Makes sense," Nigel declared. "There _were_ some raptor-type dinosaurs in the late Cretaceous South America, such as the Unenlagia, but we haven't encountered them yet on one hand and maybe they just weren't found around the sauropod nursery. Who knows? Plus the Microraptors are much smaller than their South American counterparts were." Even as he spoke, the Microraptors began to probe the disturbed soil around the carnosaurs' nests for small animals that they ate, and the much bigger dinosaurs ignored them, busy with their own affairs.

"…Yes, I'll take that," Bob muttered. "Hello, Suzanne. How did the marsupial check-up go?"

"The youngster is fine and so's the mother," Suzanne the vet said sourly.

"Out of curiosity," Bob spoke up suddenly, "were the Smilodon always friends with Martha the mammoth?"

"Not immediately, but since they hang around with me often, even when I got to shear Martha – and the Elasmotherium – they met her often enough, so they know of her," Suzanne replied, eyeing the groundskeeper warily. "Why are you asking?"

"Don't sabre-tooth cats hunt mammoths-?"

"Different sabre-tooth cats and different mammoths," Nigel replied instead. "The woolly mammoth lived in the north, where the role of Smilodon was played by a different sabre-toothed cat, the Homotherium. Meanwhile, Smilodon lived further south, where the mammoths were, well, wool-less, like the Columbian mammoth instead. The two animals just do not click enough for each other to become enemies. Did they become friends instead?"

"Well, it's an interesting story," Suzanne muttered, as she began to lead Nigel away from the dinosaurs, with Bob following behind. "Maybe you better should see it for yourself."

As the humans left, they did not notice a young sauropod, no longer really a sauropodlet, but more of a juvenile, approach the two carnosaurs. Immediately the two carnivores stopped what they very doing, shifted in stance, and slammed into the herbivore with all the finesse and speed of two runaway trains, dropping it in its' tracks. Unlike the tyrannosaurs, the longer, shallower jaws and slender teeth of carnosaurs are not truly suited for crushing bone, but this sauropod was still a small juvenile, and so the theropods just tore it into pieces swallowed through sheer hunger-fuelled physical strength. They might have lost some teeth in the process, but that was not a problem – as in case of other theropods, they would grow new ones. In any case, the entire process was done so quickly that none of the humans had heard anything happen behind their retreating backs – but the Park's animal residents smelled it all the same and had different reactions to this.

The balance between the Park's various residents was about change once more…

_TBC_


	4. Chapter 4

**Prehistoric Park: Allosaurus**

_Disclaimer: all characters belong to Impossible Pictures™._

The dinosaurs were not getting along.

It all started with the tyrannosaurs: as soon as they have properly smelled the new arrivals – aka, the giant Giganotosaurus carnivores, they stopped lounging in their new pit of a lounge, got onto their feet, cooperated yet again, in the breaking down the fence of their enclosure and went as a single pack towards the source of the new smell – i.e., the Giganotosaurus couple.

The male Giganotosaurus was not impressed. Well, no, maybe he was, but he did not show it: instead of backing down, the longer dinosaur stood its' ground, and emitted a series of sounds… and also farts… backed and flanked by its partner. Surprisingly, this tactic paid off, as the tyrannosaurs' sniffed the newcomers, the carnosaurs sniffed them back, they all took measure of each other's strengths and weaknesses, and the tyrannosaurs' withdrew. Open hostilities never took place. Instead, the big carnivores decided to go all Cold War on each other's tails, starting with clearly marking the borders of their territories with droppings and secretions. The marks of the tyrannosaurs' were more black in color and greasy in substance, whereas the Giganotosaurs' marks were more like those of modern birds in color and texture, but both stank equally bad – and that is only by human standards. The other dinosaurs had it worse.

"Nigel, this isn't good," Bob declared after taking a good long look (and also taking inventory) regarding the new development. "The Park literally stinks. All of the animals are on edge. We must break the ice without causing open hostilities between the two species!"

"Hmm," Nigel looked thoughtfully, as he looked from his observation point at a different two species: the Triceratops and the Hadrosaur families. Outside, it was a warm and sunny day, especially for the early autumn to the satisfaction of the Park's human inhabitants, but for the dinosaurs in question things just were not that enjoyable. For a while now, the two groups had had their reprieve from the Tyrannosaurus harassment, (especially because of the sauropodlets, cough), but the situation was changing fast and for the worse. The two species slash family groups kept more closely to each other than to other species of the Park, mostly due to mutual protection from the tyrannosaurs, but really, this wasn't enough: tyrannosaurs were used to fighting, hunting and killing prey that was more on the equal footing with them and this was why they hunted in packs, as a team. A single Triceratops family and a single duckbill dinosaur family just were not enough to keep them at bay or satisfied.

There were also the sauropods; whenever they were around, the other plant-eating dinosaurs kept them between themselves and the tyrannosaurs, but now the sauropods had problems of their own with the carnosaurs around; now they were much more mobile and wary than they ever were before.

"…I think that I have an idea as to where to start," Nigel reached a decision. "We must go to the late Jurassic North America for a look, first."

"Why there?" Bob asked almost despite himself.

"Because at that time there were several species of theropod dinosaurs, all of different sizes, coexisting with each other, and their prey species," Nigel replied simply. "Bob, see you later!" And he was gone.

Bob groaned and went off to figure out a strategy of his own to keep the peace within the Park.

/ / /

The late Jurassic North America at the moment when Nigel and his people arrived was lush and green, much more so than the more desolate late Cretaceous landscape where Nigel and co. had encountered tyrannosaurs and Triceratops, for example. There was nary a volcano in sight, the ground was actually covered in greenery, and there was nary a smell of smoke on the wind or a sight of a meteorite in the sky. Instead, copses of prehistoric trees and palms dotted the landscape, and the smell… the smell was interesting. Mostly of vegetation but with a strange undercurrent of a different smell as well.

"All right, people, we must keep our eyes open!" Nigel replied grandly. "Tyrannosaurus Rex hasn't had arrived in North America right now, nor had it really evolved into its' own species yet, but this period has its own carnivores – and herbivores!"

The last part was said as Nigel and his team reached a peak of a small hill, and saw a river below them. It was not a big river – more like a glorified stream, really – but there were dinosaurs drinking from it with relish. They did stand on their hind legs, but otherwise they were built differently from such theropod dinosaurs as raptors, and were clearly carnivores, as their beaked muzzles and big eyes identified them.

"The smaller species are Dryosaurus or Othnelia, the bigger one is probably Camptosaurus, and the biggest one is clearly Stegosaurus," Nigel whispered in awe as he and his people observed the various herbivorous dinosaurs getting along harmoniously enough. "This spiky-tailed reptile had had its' relatives, some of which even lived in North America rather than in Asia or Africa, but the Stegosaurus' look is unique to it." He paused and added, musingly, mostly to himself: "Most of these dinosaurs died out without leaving descendants in the Cretaceous, because the North American continent changed quite a lot between the two epochs. Pity-"

Sadly, Nigel was interrupted by a new arrival, as it burst from a copse of trees on the opposite shore of the glorified stream, its hide, its' ridged back and the double crest on its' muzzle covered in various greenery caught on its yellowish scales and ridges. Even with such a weak wind that was currently blowing through the air, the stench of its' breath was really bad, and it looked to be genuinely hungry as it charged at the other dinosaurs in a direct, straightforward rush, both its' jaws and clawed forelimbs locked and loaded, metaphorically speaking.

"Must be an Allosaurus, one of the most common carnivorous dinosaurs of North America of this time," Nigel muttered thoughtfully. "It wasn't the biggest of its time, it's not that much bigger than the abelisaurs that we have seen on our first trip to the late Cretaceous South America, but it is still formidable…"

Apparently it was not that formidable, for even as most of the herbivorous dinosaurs scattered, the alpha Stegosaurus bull moved forwards and sidewise to meet it, its' spiked tail swinging in a clear threat display, throwing clumps of soil and vegetation with its' strikes.

However, the Allosaurus was not impressed: it just adjusted its' rush and lashed forwards with its snapping jaws, closing them on one of the Stegosaurus' back plates – and then the Allosaurus tensed its long but powerful neck, (it was built much more like the Giganotosaurus than like the T-Rex, for example), in an attempt to rip the back plate out, but that was a mistake. The Stegosaurus rotated with the Allosaurus' pull and swung its own tail, this time in no display but in a direct attack. The spiked appendage hit the Allosaurus on the top of one of its' hind limbs, both piercing the flesh and knocking the carnivore off its feet and into the stream, where it clearly struggled in righting itself. It was clearly done with the attack

The Stegosaurus, meanwhile, was done with the carnivore, as it whirled around and began to lead away its' own family away from the Allosaurus – right in the direction of Nigel, his people, and the time portal to the Prehistoric Park.

"Perfect!" Nigel said brightly. "This just might be the solution that we're looking for?"

"Really?" came the skeptical response, but Nigel was not deterred:

"Yes, you'll see."

/ / /

"Nigel, you want to explain what are you thinking?" Bob declared grouchily, as the herd of Stegosaurs abruptly found itself in the Prehistoric Park, as Nigel, Bob, and their underlings led them into the area usually frequented by their distant horned and duckbilled relatives.

"I'm changing the equation again!" Nigel replied brightly. "It already was changed by the arrival of the sauropods and the hardrosaurs – remember Matilda's misadventure with the latter? – but then the carnosaurs arrived and changed the situation once again. So, I'm restoring the balance once more."

"Oh, how so?" Bob skeptically asked.

"You don't recognize? Take a look," Nigel swept out his arms in a grand gesture. "Doesn't it remind you of anything?"

Bob looked. (Suzanne was currently busy in her office doing paperwork). The Triceratops and hadrosaur families did not actually have problems with the new arrivals; in fact, the way they were treating or using them was not unlike their previous relationship with the sauropods – now they were keeping the stegosaurs' between them and the theropods... especially the Tyrannosaurus pack.

For their part, the aforementioned tyrannosaurs did not appear to be too impressed by the new arrivals at first, as Matilda, (who else), making a mock charge at the spiky-tailed herbivores.

The Stegosaurus bull swung his tail at her, barely missing the carnivore. Matilda stopped her charge, (Terrence and No. 3 weren't even trying here by now), took a sniff at the place where the tail spikes tore open the ground, took a good long look at the Stegosaurs again, and withdrew, followed by the other tyrannosaurs.

For their part, the Giganotosaurus couple were content with keeping their distance with the non-sauropod dinosaurs: by now it was very much evident that they have built a nest and weren't allowing any dinosaur within its' distance, (aside from the Microraptors, it seemed): when the Stegosaurs and their new entourage tried to approach it, the Giganotosaurus male immediately confronted them face to face, opening its' long muzzle wide and screeching a direct challenge.

The Stegosaurus' pack leader abruptly stopped, took several long sniffs of air, and sharply turned around, away from the carnivores' nest: it cared only about ending conflicts with other dinosaurs, not starting them, and that was the end of that.

"…What are you talking about?" the groundskeeper Bob proclaimed when Nigel had declared that. "What is the end of what?"

"The new threat to the Triceratops and the Edmontosaurus families, of course," Nigel replied as if it was obvious. "Previously, they used the sauropod herd to keep them protected further from the tyrannosaurs, but with the arrival of the carnosaurs the sauropods have developed their own problems and no longer can help the others as well as they once did. The Stegosaurs, meanwhile, can, and this is what we're seeing."

Bob stared at the other man in mute… something. "What about the sauropods?" he finally spoke. "Didn't the entire thing started because of them?"

"Of course it did," Nigel nodded in agreement. "They clearly aren't getting along with the other herbivores still, so I need to work on that still. I think that we'll need to go to the early Cretaceous North Africa next."

"Why? It also got sauropods there?"

"Naturally, this is why I'm going there," Nigel nodded. "Anything else?"

"Yes," Bob finally muttered. The clarity of his goal, of his thoughts, that was so, well, clear lately, now seemed to have vanished, and all that remained was exhaustion, mental rather physical. "The markings?"

"What about the markings?" Nigel did not appear to be too worried about them either. "We always had them and droppings there, so what else is new?"

Bob could not really reply immediately, because a Microraptor had caught his eye, or rather – several of them, as those small, flying, non-avian dinosaurs landed onto the ground and began to pick up the droppings of the bigger dinosaurs – literally, in order to see if anything edible still remained within them.

"Yes, and they do it regularly – this is why their numbers have grown since we've brought them there," Nigel nodded sagely. "I'm thinking that some of the smaller carnivores had eaten some of them at first, but lately not so much, so their numbers are growing even more. I'm not sure that we can handle them as things currently are for much longer."

"Yes, well, maybe you should worry about the sauropods first," Bob said gruffly.

"Don't worry, I will," Nigel replied, and the two men just kicked back and enjoyed the warm and sunny autumn afternoon.

_TBC_


	5. Chapter 5

**Prehistoric Park: Spinosaurus**

_Disclaimer: all of the characters here belong to Impossible Pictures™._

This particular morning has dawned on a more ambiguous note: it had rained last night, but now the sky was clearing up, as a fresh, cool wind was blowing from the north.

…As a matter of fact, the wind played another important role – it destroyed the smell, or perhaps – the stench of the dinosaur scent markings, making the air in the Park less pungent again, at least for a while. The tyrannosaurs just grumbled and rumbled deep within their chests; the Giganotosaurus couple was more concerned as they sat up and sniffed the air, looking at the sky, almost as if they were expecting trouble to come up at them from some unexpected quarter – but all was quiet.

"Of course they're worried," grumbled someone from Nigel's field team. "As it was explained to us, it seemed that the South American dinosaurs died out sometime before the asteroid had struck Earth, because their world grew too cold for them to live. Naturally the South American carnivores are worried that they are in for a rerun!"

"Precisely!" Nigel agreed brightly, as he prepared his team to go into the early Cretaceous North Africa. "Plus the fact that the female of the couple has laid her eggs soon after they arrived here is also playing a role. Suzanne, can you please check out on the eggs and see how they are developing? Please and thank you!" and he and his people were off.

Suzanne and Bob remained staring at each other. "I'm not even all that angry at him anymore," Suzanne muttered to the Scot. "I'm more like astonished as to how his able to be, well, himself instead."

"Nigel is Nigel," Bob shrugged philosophically, after his own encounter with Nigel's logic and life philosophy last night, regarding the dinosaurs' scent marks. He had to admit that today, after the last night's rain and this morning's brisk wind, Nigel's attitude was making more sense than how it usually did. Not by much, but still. "So, about the new eggs?"

"Yes, we'll have to check them out," Suzanne muttered, now upset for an entirely different reason. "And those dinosaurs are almost fully grown and have no attachment to us, or knowledge of us, or acceptance for that matter yet. This is going to be fun! Not."

Bob just nodded in agreement and the pair left to prepare for their next op.

/ / /

For its part, the north of early Cretaceous Africa met Nigel and his team with an even wetter climate than the late Jurassic North America had. Whereas the late Cretaceous South America had been decidedly dry at first, and then also cold, the early Cretaceous Africa was pointedly wet. Wet and quite warm as well, humid even.

"Now, does anyone see any sauropods?" Nigel asked his field team. "Remember, they're the really big plant-eating dinosaurs with long necks and tails!"

"No, but there are those guys," someone called back, pointing off to one of Nigel's sides. Nigel look at that direction and saw some distinctly non-sauropod dinosaurs enjoying themselves. They were built somewhat like the Prehistoric Park's own duck-billed dinosaurs, including ridged, though toothless, beaks, but their tails were shorter, (though they were still stiff), and their backs were ridged. Sailed, even.

"They aren't Spinosaurs," someone from Nigel's field team muttered more in affirmation than as a question.

"Of course not," Nigel easily agreed. "Spinosaurus and its' relatives were carnivores, though unlike the other carnivorous dinosaurs, whether abelisaurs, tyrannosaurs, or carnosaurs, they had more in common with crocodiles instead, sailed backs or not. These dinosaurs are Ouranosaurs – Ouranosaurus, if you want to speak singular, and they are less derived cousins of the North American duckbilled dinosaurs instead. I must admit that this is a rather pleasant surprise to see them, but we are looking for sauropods instead. I wonder if we will see any them though – we seem to have a bit of a bad luck in finding them ever since we went to the late Cretaceous South America the first time around…"

Nigel did not finish, as the ground beneath him shook – but it was not an earthquake. Rather, the sauropods in question have arrived on the scene – and they were huge, easily dwarfing the plant-eating sail-backed dinosaurs.

"Paralititans!" Nigel whispered in awe. "They weren't as big as the later sauropods from South America, but they and their North American cousins, Paluxysaurs, were still very large and powerful reptiles…"

Nigel did not finish, as the local sauropods approached at the river's edge and began to drink. As they did, the Ouranosaurus herd began to move away down the river's course, as large shapes began to appear in the riverside shrubs and greenery. They were certainly smaller and shorter than the sauropods were, but their body shape and build left no doubt - these were the local carnivores.

"Carcharodontosaurs!" Nigel said brightly. "They are the local cousins of Giganotosaurus and Allosaurus; certainly the family similarity is obvious. They are also specialized sauropod hunters!"

Fortunately for Nigel and his team the carnivores ignored him, but rather began to flank the sauropod herd, probably to try and launch a surprise attack, but that strategy unexpectedly backfired, as the river's water erupted, revealing a very different dinosaur from the ones seen previously – a Spinosaurus! As it emerged from the river's depths in all of its' sail-backed glory, with water running down its' sail, back and flanks, it became obvious that the Spinosaurus wasn't just built completely differently from the other theropod dinosaurs, it was also quite larger than any other theropod dinosaur that Nigel and his people have ever seen or brought to the Prehistoric Park – and right not didn't appear to be very friendly or social.

"This is going to be bad," Nigel muttered as the sauropods finally caught onto the commotion that was going on off to their side. They swung their long necks and heads around, took a proper look, and saw the Spinosaurus in question. Moreover, they were not particularly pleased with what they saw: the sauropod herd leader made a deep coughing sound and began to move towards the Spinosaurus, which was now sitting still in the water, a small (in proportion to it) stingray still clutched in its' jaws. It was a big dinosaur, but the Paralitian bull was bigger yet – right now, it appeared to be huge enough to reach the clouds floating by with its head… and it was moving towards the Spinosaurus with one footstep at a time. It had to keep at least three of its' legs on the ground – it was that huge and heavy, but each of its' steps was also huge, causing the ground to shake.

The Spinosaurus was not impressed, however – as the bigger reptile made one footstep too close in the sailbacked dinosaur's opinion, it lashed out with its front claws, and the thick and robust skin on the Paralitian's front legs just burst open in a big spray of blood.

For a few seconds everything was still, and then the sauropod did its best to whirl around and begin to retreat. Sadly, at its' size this wasn't easy or quickly, and the Spinosaurus wasn't finished, as its own claws tore into the sauropod's flank several times with the same quickness that the first strike had until the sail-backed carnivore led its' behemoth opponent go.

Sadly for the latter, the other theropods were getting started, for as the sauropod finally made it ashore, more snapping jaws and eager claws already waited for him. Some were the carnosaurs that had appeared earlier, the Carcharodontosaurs, others were built more like the Carnotauruses of the late Cretaceous South America had been, so they were the local abelisaurs instead, but they all were hungry all the same.

"And this is our que to leave," Nigel said thoughtfully. "A feeding frenzy is never a safe place to hang around. Wonder as to where did the Ouranosaurus herd go-"

"Uh, Nigel, about that," one of his field crew muttered.

/ / /

The carnosaur couple were lying at their self-designated nesting site, right next to their nest. They were as immobile as a pair of modestly sized mountain ranges and about as welcoming. "Hello," Suzanne waved weakly as she moved into the range of the disturbed soil, scattering several Microraptors in the process. "Don't mind me; I just want to look at your more prized possessions to see if they are viable?"

The dinosaurs did not really understand the vet's statement or her words, but they did raise themselves slightly and began to sniff at her, as apparently she was too small for them to see her properly. "Urk," Suzanne said brightly, as she realized that this was a bad idea: while the Giganotosaurs' heads and jaws didn't appear to be as powerful as the T-Rexes' were, their sheer size compensated for this nicely. "I'm harmless?" she tried again, feeling ridiculous and scared – she had made her strategy on the information that since the Cretaceous South America never really had any mammals, unlike its' northern counterparts, the carnosaurs just wouldn't consider her to be any sort of threat… and it paid off, apparently, as the carnosaurs dropped back down, and began to ignore her… mostly. Given their respective size to her, this was not the best outcome for the vet, but she had to take what she could, and so she approached the nest, and saw… that several – make that quite a few – Microraptors were there already, either probing the disturbed soil for food, or just resting there, clearly feeling safe from the much huger carnivores… unlike Suzanne, who was not.

…On the other hand, the carnosaurs seemed to be ignoring Suzanne now more than ever, now that the Microraptors were not reacting to her either. Clearly, they decided that she was not any more dangerous to their unhatched offspring than the Microraptors were, and so they were ignoring her. Again, Suzanne wasn't about to look at the gift horse in the mouth, especially when the mouth in question was size of a small cavern and studded with some thin, but razor-sharp, serrated teeth.

The ground rumbled underfoot… but none of the Park's sauropods were anywhere in sight – clearly, if there was something that those dim-witted giants were afraid of, or at least worried about, it were those new carnivores. Consider that the latter might have already eaten a couple of their juveniles, the sauropods were justified in this – and so they were not anywhere in sight.

…Instead it was a large herd of much smaller dinosaurs, looking somewhat like the Park's resident duck-billed dinosaurs, but with a sailed or a ridged back. The carnosaurs looked at them for several moments, blinked a couple of times, and then got onto their feet in one smooth motion and charged at the new arrivals with a speed that belied their huge size. Within moments, the new arrivals have scattered, except for one that was pinned down by the huge carnivores, which dismembered and ate it ASAP before returning to their nest at a more leisurely pace. Clearly, they still needed to figure out how to balance their diet.

It was then that Nigel, with Bob alongside, appeared on the scene. "Hello, Suzanne," he said brightly, waving to the vet.

"And hello to you too," Suzanne replied. "Well, the carnosaurs have laid three eggs – it's a surprisingly small clutch, and the eggs themselves are rather small in size, but they are viable."

"Good, because our couple themselves are in the 'young adult' category still," Nigel nodded. "Say, where's your usual entourage-?"

"Elsewhere," Suzanne said dismissively, not wanting to go into the details – i.e., Martha and the elephants were playing with the younger Smilodon once more, while the marsupials were sitting on the sidelines and enjoying the show. "What's up with you?"

"Accidentally, brought back a herd of Ouranosaurs," Nigel shrugged. "They are slightly different relatives of the North American hadrosaurs, you know?"

"I think that that I saw them," Suzanne said airily, not wanting to go into the details again – this time over the fact that at least one of them got eaten by a pair of hungry carnivores ASAP. "Want to go and discuss as to where we'll put them over dinner?"

"Good idea," Nigel agreed easily enough, and the couple left, with Bob the groundskeeper in tow.

_TBC_


	6. Chapter 6

**Prehistoric Park: Ceratosaurus**

_Disclaimer: see previous chapters._

The morning dawned again as a cloudy and windy one, but since autumn was coming upon the Prehistoric Park, (even in this climate), then no one was particularly minding or surprised.

"So where is Nigel going this time?" Suzanne asked Bob, as they were finishing their breakfast and preparing for today's working day.

"Back to the late Jurassic North America, for one last time," the Scotsman nodded, "to see the sauropods of that time and place. Good for him, I say!"

"You're suspiciously cheery," Suzanne spoke, sounding, not surprisingly, suspicious. "What gives?"

"Meh, Nigel seems to be slowing down, by his standards, anyhow," Bob shrugged, "so soon this adventure will be over, and the next one will begin."

"…Is that a good thing?"

"It's a constant thing. The reprieve between the end of one adventure and the beginning of the second is a good thing," Bob shrugged… just as a Microraptor half-flew half-glided past him. "And on this topic, any ideas what we should do about the little guys?"

"None whatsoever," Suzanne admitted. "I think some of them did get eaten at first, but it seems that they aren't very tasty, so now they're being ignored." She paused and added. "And just like some birds they are ready to eat anything that they can, so if something isn't done about them eventually, they will become a nuisance."

"Meh, when Nigel comes back from his sauropod-related trip we can ask him about them," Bob shrugged, as he looked upwards, and saw that the marsupial lion was looking down on him from the veranda's rooftop. "And what is the Thylacoleo doing here?"

"Honestly? Regardless of its' name, it is more like a bear or a wolverine, constantly travelling. The marsupial sabretooths are just as nomadic, whereas the young Smilodon…" Suzanne shrugged and pointed at the other end of the veranda, where the sabre-toothed cats in question were shooting nasty looks at the marsupials, but without an intent of turning the confrontation physical at all. "See?"

"I do," Bob nodded, "and how are their parents doing?"

"Quietly for a while… which means that you have probably jinxed us," Suzanne sighed. "Come on, let's clear our collective consciousness, prepare for the inevitable, and check up on them."

Bob, who admittedly would rather deal with prehistoric mammals than with dinosaurs, just shook his head and complied.

/ / /

_Meanwhile…_

"Well, we're at the right time, but a different place," Nigel noted with genuine curiosity: this corner of the late Jurassic North America was different from the last one, where he and his field team had seen a battle between an Allosaurus and a Stegosaurus: there were no trees, very little other greenery and equally little water, but plenty of sand and stone. It was almost reminiscent of the Grand Canyon of the modern time, but with plenty of differences, and a much more red color in the stone strata as far as the eye could see.

"Interesting," Nigel looked around. Overhead, the sun blazed through a largely clear blue sky, with just few clouds and pterosaurs flying to break-up the monotony. "We must be in a dry period right now. This isn't encouraging, I admit – sauropods need a lot of water to fuel their bulk, so with water in short supply so should be they…"

As if to call Nigel out, the earth shook underfoot, and sand grains, and even pebbles skipped around, as something ponderous, or maybe even several somethings were coming through. Excited and energized once more, Nigel picked up his binoculars, and sure enough, there they were – sauropods! Moving slowly and ponderously, their heads held high, they were moving in a small herd or a large family group, their eyes looking around, half-expecting an ambush to come out at them from some smallish nook or cranny that the local neighbourhood had plenty of. However, none was forthcoming.

And then the sauropods descended the slope completely and entered the bottom of the canyon – still safe. They began to continue to move forwards…saw Nigel and his field team…paused and moved on, judging them to be, quite rightly, to be too small to be dangerous even to the sauropod youngsters, let alone the grown-ups.

"Camarasaurs!" Nigel said excitedly. "They are on the small side for sauropod dinosaurs, but they are still formidable and shouldn't be taken lightly!"

Something bipedal, light-footed and small-sized – aka human-sized dashed through the stumping legs and feet of the sauropods and vanished.

"These might've been Dryosaurs," Nigel said thoughtfully. "Wonder what got them spooked?"

Something else dashed through the sauropods' path – a pair of other dinosaurs – and crouched beneath a smattering of half-dead shrubs and rubble that had fallen from the canyon's side, clearly hiding and waiting for something.

The sauropods stopped.

They stopped and looked around. And apparently they saw something else approaching from the same side and they stopped even more, and one of the herd's bulls got onto his hind feet, his huge tail swinging through the air like an enormous baseball bat slash whip while its huge body and long neck and even (smallish) head blocked out the sun through sheer size. From his observation point, Nigel could not get a clear look, but he saw that the sauropod's legs shake almost as how a professional boxer's would, and then the dinosaur lunged forwards and downwards with a literally earth-shaking slam, albeit it landed on something that wasn't hard stony ground of the canyon, but on something more soft and squishy.

This was a signal of some sort as well, as the entire herd began to move forwards, confronting the attackers. They were moving slowly at first, but then they picked up momentum and visibly sped up. Soon enough, the entire herd of the herbivorous, (but still aggressive), giants was out of sight, as their unfortunate attackers, except for one, which had been smashed by the sauropod herd leader into pulp.

"This is, or rather was, one of the bigger theropod dinosaurs of the late Jurassic, either Torvosaurus or Saurophaganax," Nigel said thoughtfully, as he examined the unlucky corpse. "I must admit that I didn't expect for something like that to occur, but I guess that we got lucky – unlike this carnivore-"

"Nigel!" one of his field team's members called out as Nigel turned around and saw that they still were not alone: the dino pair emerged from behind their cover. They were small by the standards of the carnivorous dinosaurs, and rather slightly built, but with impressive nasal horns, unlike the horns of the Carnotaurus, whose horns had been more bull-like than rhinoceros-like as in case of these reptiles. They looked similar to each other, both were basically spotted, (not unlike the modern leopards or jaguars), though they were partially covered by the reddish dust of the local soil, but one of them was moderate bigger than the other one and had spectacle-like circles around its' eyes that the second one lacked.

The pair approached the theropod corpse, sniffed at it for several moments, growled at each other in a non-menacing manner, turned around left – right in the direction of the time portal, (Nigel and his field team should have really secured it better), and vanished through it. Judging by the tracks on the rocky, but dusty soil, the other-other group of dinosaurs, ones that'd been flushed by the carnivores, has already vanished through it.

Nigel and the others looked at each other.

"Oh dear," Nigel muttered.

/ / /

_Meanwhile…_

"To think that this had started rather nicely and sedated," Bob muttered to Suzanne as the two of them observed the elder Smilodon couple: somehow, in all of the sauropod-related excitement and commotion, the male managed to get over into the female's enclosure again and the two of them were copulating, again.

"…Wild cats, especially big ones as tigers and lions often go for long period of mating," Suzanne muttered. "Also – loud. We're in for some fun times ahead."

The young Smilodon, which were also the offspring of the older couple from the previous mating, took one good look at their biological parents and emitted a series of snorting and disdainful sounds that only cats, (regardless of their size and species), can do.

…The marsupials were also there. They took one good look at the older and bigger sabre-toothed cats, made some sounds that were much less amusing and much more serious than the younger Smilodon did…and moved on. They shot the bigger and older sabre-toothed cats some dark looks, (by the animal kingdom's standards), but did not challenge them – not here and now.

"This can make this situation worse," Suzanne muttered to Bob. "The Thylacosmilus is still protective of her own offspring, and if more Smilodon cubs appear on the scene, her reaction can be unpredictable, and I don't even know where to start in regards to the potential sibling rivalry!"

Bob just nodded in agreement. Big carnivores, and especially big cats (and bears), had really bad family lives, and offspring between various litters didn't always get along, and this particular Smilodon couple had turned upon their first couple of cubs… which got raised by Suzanne… and which now stayed with her rather than with the other two Smilodon of the Park. What will happen now, if there will be new Smilodon cubs running around, it was anyone's idea.

…It was then that Nigel and some other members of the Park's staff appeared on the scene as well. "What are we looking at-?" Nigel began, saw the big cats, and shook his head. "Got to admit, I didn't expect this to happen-"

"And this brings us to you, mate," Bob smoothly interrupted the other man. "How did your last sauropod-related trip went?"

"Well, I think that I've had my fill of sauropods for now," Nigel replied as the pair, and Suzanne, left the elder Smilodon couple to their own devices. "However, we did manage to get some more new arrivals in the process."

"Anyone or anything in particular?" Bob muttered, as they turned a corner, walked up a hill, and saw the Park's resident plant-eating non-sauropod dinosaurs, (ornithischians). Theo and Theodora grazed there with their family, and so did the Edmontosaurus family. The newer arrivals, a small Stegosaurus herd and an Ouranosaurus one, were there too. The Park's Ornithomimus family also hanged around there, competing with the Microraptors for whatever small animals and insects the bigger dinosaurs flushed out.

…To the greater surprise of Bob and Suzanne, there were dinosaurs that are even more new now: small, bipedal plant-eaters, which preferred to stay around the Stegosaurus herd…and were grudgingly tolerated by the spiky-tailed herbivores in return.

"Ok, I've expected worse," Bob muttered. "Those ones don't appear to be too bad."

Nigel blinked, sighed, and shifted Bob around, showing him a pair of different dinosaurs, those ones clearly carnivorous; they looked almost like medieval dragons of some sort, though admittedly they were notably smaller than the tyrannosaurs or the carnosaurs, for example.

"I've read about them!" Suzanne sounded almost excitedly. "They're Ceratosaurs, aren't they?"

"Yes," Nigel nodded, looking almost glum, especially for him. "They're small enough to try to attack us and the rest of our coworkers on one hand, and they're smart enough to possibly outmaneuver the tyrannosaurs and the carnosaurs, for example. I do not know what they will do-"

One of the horned theropods yawned, revealing teeth that were surprisingly large for a rather small carnivorous dinosaur. Its' partner nodded and shook its tail in excitement, almost as a modern crocodile would. Then they turned around and saw the local mammals. There was a pause and the two carnivores quietly went towards them with a very purposeful stride.

…This was when the Stegosaurus herd caught the wind of them; their leader snorted, emitted a series of hoarse bellows, and slammed its tail hard into the ground, sending clumps of soil and vegetation into the air. The theropods immediately stopped and gave the spiky-tailed herbivores a look that was not very pleased.

"…And on the other hand, maybe we're just panicking too soon," Nigel nodded thoughtfully. "Maybe we'll just wait and see."

Bob and Suzanne just shook their heads. It seemed that life at the park was back to normal, at least for now.

End


End file.
